Madonna Released New Music Video via Social App

It looks like Madonna used almost every social app to promote her new album – the latest was live video broadcasting app Meerkat. Before, Madonna appeared on Instagram, Snapchat and Grindr during the campaign for Rebel Heart.

Meerkat launched less than 2 months ago as an application that enables people to broadcast video live from their mobile devices to their followers on Twitter. Thus far, Madonna is the biggest star to use the new app. It remains not clear how the singer will use it to release a music video, because it works by the broadcaster pointing camera of their device at whatever they want to stream.

Industry observers admit that if Madonna could air pre-recorded footage, it would be an interesting departure for the social app, because such functionality would give it advantage in its battle with the main competitor Periscope owned by Twitter. In 2015, Madonna also raised a rumpus on Instagram when she posted doctored images of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, John Lennon and Bob Marley. She also released her last video Living for Love on Snapchat and ran a contest on Grindr to encourage her fans to be creative.

Apparently, Madonna’s activity indicates the music industry’s keen interest in the popularity of social apps, even the ones not specifically designed for music. It should be noted that another musician, Jason Derulo, also premiered his new video within a social app – Tinder is commonly known as a dating app, but the artist used it differently: after fans who discovered his profile swiped right (as they would for a dating match they approved of), they could watch a music video Want to Want Me. The statistics say that over the 3-day campaign, more than 1.1 million fans did so.

The latest decision of Madonna to use Meerkat may come as a surprise, especially taking into account that she is one of the 16 co-owners of streaming music service Tidal, purchased back in March by Jay Z. The service is also going to use exclusive video premieres to promote itself, and other co-owners have already released their stuff on Tidal, but not Madonna. The queen chose to release only a 16-second teaser on Tidal before its full premiere on Meerkat.

Although Madonna has less than 1,000 subscribers on Meerkat, which is a very limited audience for a music star, the video premiere will of course be promoted across other social networks.